Last year brought me to a number of countries that were up high on my „places to explore list.“ Trips to Cuba, Mexico, Spain, Romania, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, and a couple of road trips through Germany showed me again how diverse and unique people and places are....

Coral Islands
Our diving instructor
Bangkok
Chao Phraya Dinner Cruise
I find it real stupid how I kept avoiding going international (on my own & with my money), just because I wanted to start off on a bigger scale, going to Europe or USA and hence kept under-estimating the beautiful experience I would have got by visiting cheaper and nearby countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand, UAE or even Nepal for that matter....

Most of the children stood in one spot and would mouth along with the pop song, barely smiling and not much in the way of entertaining the crowd, but one of our little guys had his step-mom hop up there on the stage and they wowed the audience with hip gyrations and large arm movements to the song, “I’m sexy and I know it” by LMAFO. http://www.vevo.com/watch/lmfao/sexy-and-i-know-it/USUV71101468 Needless to say, they won over the judges and crowd!...

There’s also a boat house which caught my attention and I dreamt up scenarios which involved me living in the cliff-side house and popping down daily to take my boat out for a trip to a nearby town....

Inquisitive to explore, I made my way through the small entrance gate and like a magic, the other side of the gate popped up into million tiny fragments to present an organized stack of red bricks in a certain pattern which together, formed a giant marvelous picturesque monument....

Pop into a cab or a local train and find yourself in south Bombay tasting the culture of this ever-vibrant city by taking one of the most diverse strolls ever on the streets of Kala Ghoda and Colaba....

The manager of the hotel was keen on testing me and told me that there is one more thing that makes Grand Haveli unique in design (it was more like a pop up quiz) and soon I could decipher that, the extensive use of floral designs in the courtyard was way different from the loud images I had seen in other havelis....